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Dessert

Carrot Pudding

A baked carrot and bread pudding with nutmeg, cinnamon, sugar, eggs, butter, wine, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Carrot Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Grate the carrots and bread.

Make the pudding

  1. Add grated nutmeg, salt, cinnamon, sugar, beaten eggs, melted butter, wine, and milk.

  2. Beat the mixture until well combined.

  3. Pour into a buttered dish.

  4. Sprinkle fine sugar on top.

Bake

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until set.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Carrot + cinnamontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together981 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  3. Carrot + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,424 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the custard and bind the pudding into a firm, sliceable structure.
Bread
Absorbs the liquid and gives the pudding its body.
Carrots
Add moisture, sweetness and colour to the pudding.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture.
Milk
Provides liquid that softens the bread and sets with the eggs.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Eggs set as they heat, so the pudding should be baked until just firm. Overbaking can make the custard grainy and dry, while underbaking leaves it loose in the middle.

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, nutmeg, cinnamon, sugar, egg, butter, wine):

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, nutmeg, cinnamon, sugar, egg, butter, wine. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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